To find a placename in GHAP, you can conduct a simple or advanced search. 

Layers are additions to GHAP that are contributed by users. They contain data about placenames, events, sites, journeys, people, and more. They can be layered on top of the information in GHAP to show more information or give more context. 

Multilayers group several layers together so their information can be viewed on the same map. They’re useful for showing overlapping or intersecting data from different layers. 

Adding layers and multilayers to GHAP:

• Makes humanities information more discoverable 
• Contributes to the deeper meaning of places and people’s knowledge of culture 
• Helps create interesting and interactive map visualisations 
• Allows you to share your maps on the web
• Gives new insights into research through visualisation and analysis 

One of the main advantages of GHAP is the ability to view individual search results, layers, and multilayers on a map. To view a record in a map, look for the View Maps button. You will find it at the top of the search results page, the right of browse layers and multilayers pages, and the top of individual layer or multilayer detail pages.

1. Select View Maps to see a list of visualisation options for a record. 
2. Choose any map view option to open the record on a map in a new tab.

Map views

Each kind of map view is suitable for different purposes and projects. 

All map views include options for satellite imagery, street maps, and other common base layer options. All maps also include clickable points that display information. 

To comply with accessibility standards, the colours of the dots on a multilayer map have been selected based on web design guidelines for colour blindness. 

• 3D Viewer: Shows dots on a 3D map. This is the most basic visualisation and good for simple maps. E.g. 1833 NSW town populations with placenames 
• Cluster: Shows dots close to each other merged into a large dot with a number indicating how many points are in it. This map is best for large amounts of data, or large search results, or if points are very close together. E.g. 19th Century Australian Bushfire Reporting 
• Journey Route: Shows a line between points in the order in which they were added to GHAP. This map is best for journeys or showing events that don’t have dates associated with them in a sequence. For example, if you wish to indicate a route, or give directions, these may be followed at any time. E.g. Kokoda Trail
  (Currently, the order of places can’t be changed after you upload to GHAP, and if you edit a place it may change the order. Ensure your data is in the right order before you import it.)
• Journey Times: Shows a line between points in the order of their dates. This map is best for visualising a specific journey where each point has a date, such as a ship’s journey with a log of times and coordinates, or a band’s tour with dates in different cities. It could also be an alternative to the Timeline view, to show the order of events. E.g. The Easybeats ‘Big Show’ Tour 
• Timeline: Shows an interactive timeline on the map so you can see where events occurred across time. You can move each end back and forward, or select a range and ‘play’ it to watch events show up and disappear in the moving time window. This map is best for collections of events with dates and locations, such as where incidents occurred across the country, or times that institutional sites started and ceased operation. It’s also an alternative for viewing journeys with dates. E.g. Australian Prisons 
• Werekata Flight By Route: Shows a 3D map with a flying bird’s eye view moving from point to point on a journey route. This map is for animating a journey route. It enables you to better imagine how the journey may feel in person. ‘Werekata’ is Awabakal for kookaburra. E.g. Crocodile and Rainbow Serpent, Walyalup (Fremantle) 
• Werekata Flight By Time: The same as Werekata Flight By Route, but in order of dates. E.g. Malaspina 1789 

TLCMap, and therefore GHAP, is about open data, making research public and engaging, and enabling re-use of data in further research. The open and transparent sharing of information has always been fundamental to the academic process.

Standards note: In GHAP, layers and multilayers include fields enabling you specify the licencing terms, and any cautions and acknowledgements. If you are unsure about licencing, try Creative Commons for licencing covering common scenarios. We recommend CC BY (anyone can copy and re-use with attribution) which is commonly used for Australian government data, or CC BY-NC (free for non-commercial re-use only).

Handling Indigenous information involves ethical responsibility including and beyond copyright law. Do not upload any information without permission, and in the licencing and re-use section, add terms that anyone wanting to re-use the information should also obtain permission. 

There are different ways you can share GHAP content.

<iframe src="https://views.tlcmap.org/v2/journey.html?load=https%3A%2F%2Fghap.tlcmap.org%2Flayers%2F721%2Fjson%3Fline%3Dtime" width="90%" height="400"> </iframe>

Some layers have extended data that is specifically relevant to that layer, or the project it comes from. When a layer is added, for example by uploading a CSV spreadsheet, any extra columns are added as ‘Extended Data’. It is possible to search this information within any layer for granular and nuanced queries and, because you can save searches, maps views of these various nuances. This can be a very powerful tool for mapping different facets of a layer.

• Go to the ‘Advanced’ section of the Search page.
• In the ‘Layers’ field enter the name of a layer with extended data.
• In the ‘Extended Data’ field enter a search term. Special syntax is needed.

Extended Data Search Syntax

The syntax is in the format:

[attribute] [condition] [value]

You could think of the ‘attribute’ as the column name in a spreadsheet. It means something like ‘show me all the information in this layer where this is that’. Eg: if your table of convicts had a column for ‘Profession’ – “Give me everything in the convict layer where ‘Profession’ is ‘Blacksmith’.”

condition   	Type of value
textmatch	(Contains)    e.g. name textmatch 'Jo'
=       	(Exact Match) e.g.  name = 'Joanna'
<       	numeric input only.  e.g.  Cost > 500
>       	numeric input only.  e.g.  Cost < 500
before  	date format only(YYYY-MM-DD , YYYY-MM , YYYY) e.g Start before 1995-12   End before 2012-05-05
after   	date format only(YYYY-MM-DD , YYYY-MM , YYYY) e.g Start after 1995-12   End after 2012-05-05

(To handle values with spaces in them, use quote marks.)

Some examples:

• Profession textmatch Blacksmith
• ‘Profession’ textmatch ‘Chimney Sweep’
• Age < 12
• DateOfPhotograph before 1900-01-01

You can combine these with the word AND, eg:

‘Profession’ textmatch ‘Chimney Sweep’ AND Age < 12

Combining faceted searches within layers with multilayers is a powerful way to visualise and compare nuances in your data. You can create a map that shows different aspects and nuances of any map layer. For example, if your layer contains information on different categories, you can create seperate maps of each category, then recombine them in a multilayer for comparison. This is easiest to understood with examples.

First we need to isolate the facets with a search within a layer, then put them back together with a multilayer to compare and contrast them.

Example A: Compare facets of the Prisons layer
The Australian Prisons layer contains information about different kinds of prisons, and we’d like to see these differences on a map. Specifically we’d like to compare prisons for convicts, for women, and reformatories. Some of this information is in the description of each prison.

• Go to Advanced search
• Enter ‘convict’ in the search field.
• Tick the box to search ‘Description’.
• Enter the name of the layer you want to search within in the ‘Layers’ field (ie: Australian Prisons).
• Click the ‘Search’ button. The search page would look like this:

• When you see the Search Results click the ‘Save Search’ button, and give it a memorable name, like ‘Convict Prisons’.
• Repeat for the search ‘female’ and ‘reformatory’.

Now you have 3 saved searches. You can find them under My searches.

• Go to My multilayers and create a new multilayer.
• Click the ‘Add Saved Search’ button to add each layer.

Now you can view these different facets of your layer.

Example B: Compare Arrests for Vagrancy By Country of Birth

The layer Vagrancy Arrests, NSW: 1862-1880 [Coleborne, 2023] includes a lot of extended data about people arrested for vagrancy from historical records police records. The ‘attribute’ or column called ‘CountryOfBirth’ indicates which country the person came from. There are some from China, Brazil, Jamaica, Canada and America as well as people from Europe. In this example, given the troubled politics between Britain and Ireland at the time, we would like investigate attitudes of the British colonial government to, and the social status of, Irish immigrants. We can do this by seeing if there are any differences between the arrests of people from England, Scotland and Ireland.

• Go to Advanced search
• In ‘Layers’ type and select the layer ‘Vagrancy Arrests, NSW: 1862-1880’
• In the ‘Extended Data’ field enter: CountryOfBirth textmatch ‘Ireland’
• Click the ‘Search’ button. The search page would look like this:

• When you see the Search Results click the ‘Save Search’ button, and give it a memorable name, like ‘Irish Vagrants’.
• Repeat for the search ‘England’ and ‘Scotland’ and save the results for each. (You could also try the other countries of birth. These are interesting historically and biographically, but too few for statistical comparison: Born at Sea, n/a, China, Australia, Germany, Canada, America, France, Brazil, Jamaica, Isle of Man.)

Now you have 3 saved searches. You can find them under My searches.

• Go to My multilayers and create a new multilayer.
• Click the ‘Add Saved Search’ button to add each layer.

Now you can view these different facets of your layer.

Web services are typically used by developers. This enables data in GHAP to be accessed by computer and used in other applications or other websites.

You can construct a query using a URL, with GET parameters, to return results in formats that computers can process so it can be used in other systems. E.g. a system that needs to search for Australian place names could call the TLCMap Gazetteer. 

Doing a search through the normal GUI interface produces a URL with the same get parameters the webservice would use – simple. To get this as KML (a species of XML) or JSON, just add an extra parameter to the query string. 

E.g. to fuzzy search for ‘Newcastle’ within NSW and get the results as KML just use: 

http://tlcmap.org/ghap/search?fuzzyname=newcastle&state=NSW&format=kml

Here are the full details (note that filters are treated as logical AND conditions, i.e. set intersection. There is no OR functionality.) 

Aliases that reflect Trove web services APIs have been added for ease of use.

Occasionally you might encounter problems while using GHAP. In this section we’ll cover some common problems and how to fix them. 

The matching the TLCMap staff have done to obtain latitude and longitude is automated. This means there may be some errors. Please contact us about any errors in places.

Of 334208 places in the ANPS data, there were a few thousand that the TLCMap team could not associate with any specific point, so the LGA was used instead. There remain only 1328 places for which we could not devise an automated way to find any coordinate at all. The way the coordinates were obtained is indicated in the results in the ‘Original Data Source’ field. In some cases, ANPS also provides more detailed information on where they obtained the data.